Still Life Photography Series
It is impossible to separate image from empire.
The still life genre, often perceived as apolitical or merely decorative, emerged in the 17th century as a potent visual language through which the ideologies of wealth, possession, and imperial power were articulated. In the Dutch Republic—then at the height of its economic and colonial expansion—the still life became a celebrated form, flourishing alongside the global ambitions of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the Dutch West India Company (WIC). The Pronkstilleven, or “ostentatious still life,” exemplified this entanglement of aesthetics and empire. Laden with imported luxuries—citrus from the Caribbean, Chinese porcelain, silks from Asia, and spices from Indonesia—these works transformed the spoils of colonial trade into symbols of domestic prosperity and national pride. They were less depictions of abundance than orchestrated performances of control over distant lands and labor.
Artists such as Pieter Claesz and Willem Kalf imbued their compositions with exquisite detail and quiet moralism. Within Vanitas paintings—still lifes meditating on mortality, transience, and the vanity of material wealth—the symbols of death (skulls, extinguished candles, wilting flowers) coexisted with those of global commerce. In these works, the imperial enterprise was both displayed and sublimated, aestheticized through a veil of Calvinist restraint and philosophical introspection. Ontbijtjes, or “breakfast pieces,” took a more celebratory tone: partially eaten meals, imported delicacies, and precious tableware offered a snapshot of worldly pleasure shaped by a vast commercial network. Both subgenres, though different in tone, reflect the Dutch Republic’s entrenchment in global systems of extraction, trade, and consumption.
If the 17th-century still life served to naturalize empire by rendering it beautiful and familiar, then its contemporary echo resonates within a vastly accelerated and digitized terrain. In the 21st century, globalization operates not only as a mode of economic organization but as an immersive regime of image circulation and identity production. Goods, services, and experiences are no longer just consumed—they are curated, documented, and performed. From fast food to fast fashion, from algorithmic advertising to livestreamed intimacy, the apparatuses of late capitalism mediate our most personal and public gestures.
Contemporary subjectivity—what we buy, wear, eat, and share—is increasingly shaped by the rhythms of the global market. Identity is not only performed but also packaged: stylized, commodified, and disseminated across digital platforms. Within this system, the still life genre offers a critical tool—not merely to aestheticize consumption but to interrogate the scaffolding beneath it. What do these arrangements of objects reveal about the self under capitalism? How do we narrate identity through the visual logics of possession, proximity, and desire? In what ways do images continue to naturalize systems of power and inequality?
This photographic series reactivates the still life as a site of inquiry. By restaging the genre within the visual economy of contemporary consumer culture, the work asks how identity is constructed, commodified, and contested in an age defined by hyper-connectivity, neoliberal spectacle, and imperial residue. Through deliberate acts of selection, composition, and representation, these images reflect upon the enduring entanglement of image, object, and empire—and the bodies and lives shaped in their wake.